International drug control versus international security and peace: from similar objectives to diverging outcomes

A GCSP Public Discussion

6 Jul 2016 - 12:30-14:00

The war on drugs, which has been fought for over fifty years now, has not succeeded in preventing drug use, reducing drug production or limiting supply.

Beyond this failure to achieve its own stated aims, the war on drugs has also produced a range of serious, negative costs. Many of these costs have been identified by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and are described by them as the ‘unintended consequences’ of the drug control system. They may have been unintended, but after more than 50 years, they can no longer be seen as unanticipated.

Drug prohibition has in fact gifted a massive money-making opportunity to organised crime groups that they have accrued a level of wealth and firepower which enables them to challenge the state, or even usurp its monopoly on legitimate violence.The subsequent militarisation of the fight against these organised crime groups has served only to further undermine security. As a result, member states that implement the UN’s drug control system are effectively obliged to violate the organisation’s founding principle: the maintenance of international peace and security. The evidence shows that the ‘threat-based’ response to certain drugs has created some of the world’s greatest security threats.

How to get there

ABOUT GCSP

The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) is an international foundation established in 1995, with 51 member states, for the primary purpose of promoting peace, security and international cooperation through executive education and training, applied policy analysis and dialogue.